This is a blog about the people, processes, thoughts, and opinions about technology from Autodesk.

Books

February 12, 2019

I was the project manager for Autodesk's THE FUTURE OF MAKING book. THE FUTURE OF MAKING tells remarkable stories of how emerging technologies are changing how we make things, who makes things, and the very nature of the what we...
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February 05, 2019

I was the project manager for Autodesk's THE FUTURE OF MAKING book. THE FUTURE OF MAKING tells remarkable stories of how emerging technologies are changing how we make things, who makes things, and the very nature of the what we...
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January 28, 2019

I was the project manager for Autodesk's THE FUTURE OF MAKING book. THE FUTURE OF MAKING tells remarkable stories of how emerging technologies are changing how we make things, who makes things, and the very nature of the what we...
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January 21, 2019

I was the project manager for Autodesk's THE FUTURE OF MAKING book. THE FUTURE OF MAKING tells remarkable stories of how emerging technologies are changing how we make things, who makes things, and the very nature of the what we...
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January 08, 2019

This year I am splitting my time between working in the San Francisco office and working remotely from Texas. As someone who grew up in Louisiana and lived in Arizona and California as an adult, I knew little about Texas....
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October 10, 2018

"What would we do with time off our backs? We would make this world a perfect place. We would make our lives a perfect thing, if not for time. But I tell you now, time is an illusion. Time is...
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May 11, 2018

I don't read fiction. It's not real, so I consider it a waste of time. I read books like: Only Humans Need Apply by Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance How We Got to Now...
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April 26, 2018

I am a wine drinker. My favorite wine is a Jesse's Vineyard Zinfandel from Rock Wall Winery in Alameda, California. My second favorite wine is a Beckman Vineyard Zinfandel from Hatcher Winery in Murphys, California. I like many other kinds...
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April 19, 2018

Brian Kilmeade is an on-air personality for the politically conservative Fox network. This book was published around the time that Confederate statues were being removed from public places. My suspicion is that the motivation for this book was to ensure...
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December 08, 2017

I am a fan of Scott Adams. I think his Dilbert comic strip combines the right amount of workplace truth and humor. In addition, I am a regular reader of his blog. My boss, Jon Pittman, even gave me a...
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November 28, 2017

John Schmier is my longtime colleague. We go as far back as Autodesk's WHIP! Plug-in for the Netscape Navigator browser to view Drawing Web Files (DWF). Today, John works as a researcher on generative design in the Office of the...
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September 12, 2017

"I don't want to work. I just want to bang on the drum all day." — Todd Rundgren They say that robots are coming to take our jobs. At Autodesk, we are hoping to help create new industries to mitigate...
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July 17, 2017

If you want our new book, you can order it from Amazon.com. The Autodesk vision is to help people imagine, design, and create a better world. Our customers design, make, and use places, things, and media (TV shows, movies, games)....
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May 15, 2017

If you want our new book, you can pre-order it here. Allow me to explain. Tom Wujec is one of my colleagues. I have blogged about Tom's exploits before: Congratulations to Tom Wujec, thought leader TED Blog: Visual note-taking with...
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May 05, 2017

It's Friday, and Cinco de Mayo, so let's talk about something other than Autodesk Forge. Our daughter is getting married in September. As the traditional father-daughter dance is part of the festivities, this is a problem for me. Oh sure,...
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January 18, 2017

Jon Pittman is our VP of Corporate Strategy for Autodesk, although sometimes I wonder if he is the VP of Corporal Strategy[link]. I kid. I kid. Actually our CEO, Carl Bass, says his management team says that he has only...
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August 04, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. In a series of posts, I reviewed...
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July 28, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. I am in the process of reviewing...
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June 13, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. I am in the process of reviewing...
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June 01, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. I am in the process of reviewing...
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May 23, 2016

As a software developer, I would work with: QA team members who would come up with use cases as a way to determine what test cases to create to test the software. Marketing team members who would come up with...
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May 18, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. I am in the process of reviewing...
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May 10, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. I am in the process of reviewing...
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May 03, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. I am in the process of reviewing...
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April 26, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. My plan is to review each chapter....
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April 20, 2016

In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots and reading The Principles of Product Development FLOW: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen. My plan is to review each chapter....
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April 12, 2016

I got my book as a "new" copy from Amazon.com, so I am not sure what's up with the annotation? It's not my handwriting. In a previous blog article, I mentioned how I was getting back to my programming roots...
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April 06, 2016

My undergraduate degree from the University of Lousiana is in computer science. I specialized in top-down structured programming with an emphasis on scientific programming (as opposed to business programming). My masters degree from Arizona State University is also in computer...
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December 30, 2015

As a socially liberal, fiscally conservative Republican who lives in Alameda and works in San Francisco, life is not always easy for me. My neighbors tell my wife and me, "You are Republicans, but we like you anyway." My workmates...
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November 20, 2015

Check it out on Amazon.com I started working for Autodesk CEO, Carl Bass, in 1990 when he moved his 3D graphics company from Ithaca, New York to Alameda, California. While at Ithaca Software, Gary Wayne was our marketing VP. Gary's...
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October 13, 2015

Back in August, we had author, Ashlee Vance, come to the Autodesk Gallery and talk about his book, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. The place was packed. Ashlee shared his thoughts about Elon Musk...
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February 09, 2015

Bill O'Connor is our Innovation Strategist at Autodesk. He is the author of The Innovation Genome. One of the tenants of The Innovation Genome is that there is a difference between an invention and an innovation. An invention is simply...
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January 16, 2015

The POV Dispatch is our Autodesk internal newsletter, published monthly, where we discuss the big ideas that are important to us and our customers. It is published by our Corporate Strategy & Engagement team of which Autodesk Labs is a...
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October 09, 2014

I got my undergraduate degree in computer science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette). All my childhood I grew up thinking I would go to Louisiana State University (LSU), following in the footsteps of my brother and...
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February 04, 2014

image source: Kenneth Scudder When Autodesk conducted a getAbstract pilot, I was able to "read" a bunch of management books in a short amount of time. The getAbstract process provides 5 page summaries of well-known books including those that provide...
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September 16, 2013

In 1981 I graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and went to work for Honeywell Large Computer Products Division in Phoenix, Arizona. As luck would have it, my college roommate, Tim Barrios, also accepted a job in Phoenix,...
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August 22, 2013

I am part of a team that sends out an internal newsletter each month. It is called POV Dispatch because it shares a point of view about ideas that are important to Autodesk and our customers. Innovation is frequently one...
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July 18, 2013

I haven't read many management books. So one day when I heard our CEO, Carl Bass, say that he thought The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Chrstensen (review) was one of the few management books he thought was "worth anything,"...
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July 17, 2013

The POV Dispatch is our monthly internal newsletter where we discuss the big ideas that are important to Autodesk and our customers. The July issue covered aspects of leadership. In my submission for the POV Dispatch, I wanted to share...
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May 29, 2013

Autodesk Labs is part of the Corporate Strategy & Engagement team that is part of the Office of the CTO. As part of a team building exercise, we all read The FIVE Dysfunctions of a TEAM: A Leadership Fable by...
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May 22, 2013

I have no desire to eat pesticides. I really don't. Actually, when I was a child growing up in New Orleans, a "fog truck" used to come down our street weekly and spray huge plumes of insecticide to kill mosquitoes....
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April 18, 2013

In an earlier blog article, I mentioned Autodesk's relationship with Ramez Naam through our work with Singularity University. Ramez was kind enough to send me a copy of his book, The Infinite Resource: the power of ideas on a finite...
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March 22, 2013

When I was a software development manager working on the WHIP! Netscape Navigator browser plug-in that allowed non-CAD users to view DWF files, Jason Pratt was my marketing guy. Jason's job was to lay out the road map of features...
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January 30, 2013

The POV Dispatch is our monthly internal newsletter where we discuss the big ideas that are important to Autodesk and our customers. The upcoming February issue is related to branding, and how a brand is more than just a logo...
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January 28, 2013

Micah Solomon is regarded as one of the new gurus of customer service excellence. After my review of Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit by Leonardo Inghilleri and Micah Solomon, Micah contacted me and was gracious enough to send me a care...
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January 22, 2013

Reviewed by Jon Pittman Think about how packaged software companies (like Autodesk, Adobe, Microsoft, or Intuit) or enterprise software companies (like SAP or Oracle) deliver capability to customers and are compensated for doing so. In both cases, the companies deliver...
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January 18, 2013

As I mentioned in my review of A Whack on the Side of the Head, I am a methodical person. Since that book is designed to incite creativity, I figured that's why my boss, VP of Corporate Strategy & Engagement,...
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January 08, 2013

source: www.livius.org As I mentioned in part 1 of this book review, my boss, VP of Corporate Strategy & Engagement, Jon Pittman, gave me a copy of A Whack on the Side of the Head for Christmas. The book recommends...
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